Composition
In late August 1965 Brian Epstein had rented a house at 2850 Benedict Canyon Drive in Beverly Hills, California for the Beatles' six-day respite from their U.S. tour. The huge Spanish-style house was tucked into the side of a mountain. Soon their address became widely known and the area was besieged by fans who blocked roads and tried to scale the steep canyon while others rented helicopters to spy from overhead. The police department detailed a tactical squad of officers to protect the band and the house. The Beatles found it impossible to leave and instead invited guests including actors Eleanor Bron (who co-starred with them in Help!), Peggy Lipton and folk singer Joan Baez. On 24 August They hosted the Byrds and Fonda and, except Paul McCartney, took LSD.
Fonda wrote for Rolling Stone magazine:
| “ | I finally made my way past the kids and the guards. Paul and George were on the back patio, and the helicopters were patrolling overhead. They were sitting at a table under an umbrella in a rather comical attempt at privacy. Soon afterwards we dropped acid and began tripping for what would prove to be all night and most of the next day; all of us, including the original Byrds, eventually ended up inside a huge, empty, sunken tub in the bathroom, babbling our minds away.
I had the privilege of listening to the four of them sing, play around and scheme about what they would compose and achieve. They were so enthusiastic, so full of fun. John was the wittiest and most astute. I enjoyed just hearing him speak and there were no pretensions in his manner. He just sat around, laying out lines of poetry and thinking – an amazing mind. He talked a lot yet he still seemed so private. It was a thoroughly tripped-out atmosphere because they kept finding girls hiding under tables and so forth: one snuck into the poolroom through a window while an acid-fired Ringo was shooting pool with the wrong end of the cue. "Wrong end?" he’d say. "So what fuckin’ difference does it make?" |
” |
As the group passed time in the large sunken tub in the master bedroom Fonda brought up his nearly fatal self-inflicted childhood gunshot accident, writing later that he was trying to comfort a frightened George Harrison. Fonda said that he knew what it was like to be dead. Lennon snapped, "Listen mate, shut up about that stuff", and "You're making me feel like I've never been born." Lennon explained, "We didn't want to hear about that! We were on an acid trip and the sun was shining and the girls were dancing (some from Playboy, I believe) and the whole thing was really beautiful and Sixties. And this guy - who I really didn't know, he hadn't made Easy Rider or anything - kept coming over, wearing shades, saying 'I know what it's like to be dead,' and we kept leaving him because he was so boring. It was scary, when you're flying high: 'Don't tell me about it. I don't want to know what it's like to be dead!'" "...e was showing us his bullet wound. He was very uncool," Harrison added.
McCartney recalls: "Fonda seemed to us to be a bit wasted; he was a little out of it. I don't know if we expected a bit more of Henry 's son but he was certainly of our generation and he was alright." Actress Salli Sachse recalled: "Peter was really into music. He couldn't wait until The Beatles’ Revolver album came out. We went to the music store and played it, trying to hear any hidden messages."
When someone realised that they had not eaten all day the group tried to make dinner in the kitchen but Lennon was too confused from the drug to use his knife and fork properly and as he tried to stop his food from moving around on his plate he spilled it onto the floor.
Read more about this topic: She Said She Said
Famous quotes containing the word composition:
“I live in the angle of a leaden wall, into whose composition was poured a little alloy of bell-metal. Often, in the repose of my mid-day, there reaches my ears a confused tintinnabulum from without. It is the noise of my contemporaries.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The naive notion that a mother naturally acquires the complex skills of childrearing simply because she has given birth now seems as absurd to me as enrolling in a nine-month class in composition and imagining that at the end of the course you are now prepared to begin writing War and Peace.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“Boswell, when he speaks of his Life of Johnson, calls it my magnum opus, but it may more properly be called his opera, for it is truly a composition founded on a true story, in which there is a hero with a number of subordinate characters, and an alternate succession of recitative and airs of various tone and effect, all however in delightful animation.”
—James Boswell (1740–1795)